With You
by PinkRhino
Summary: You never leave my mind/so much of you is left behind. After Finnick's death, Annie goes back to District Four, finding something much better than just a house. She finds a home. Songfic using With You from Ghost - The Musical


**With You (from _Ghost -The Musical_)  
_-a songfic_  
**

**Rated T for a reason, guys._  
_**

The train pulls to a stop and I stand, almost robotically, slinging my small bag of belongings over my shoulder. I'm not nearly prepared for what's to come outside, but I hardly care. I can already smell the ocean air, the familiar salty scent intensifying as I stumble through the train hall.

**_I picked up your shirts this morning_**

**_I don't know why, I don't know why_**

It had been a long time coming and way more packing than I'd expected, from Thirteen to Four, but this was my home. As I wait for the rest of the new residents of the train to file in, I tap my toe impatiently, and when he finally says I can leave, I practically run, holding my bag to my side.

"Annie Cresta - ?" I turn on my heel, nearly toppling right over, but he grabs my shoulders, steadying me.

"Lloyd," I whisper, throwing my arms around the neck of the man who took me in all those years ago, when my parents drowned in the boating accident. The man who took in the lively eight-year-old and still loved the broken, nightmare-ridden girl eight years later. The man who I only wished had been at my wedding, to give me away. If one thing could've made that day anymore perfect, it would've been that. "I missed you."

"I missed you too, my little girl." He presses a kiss to the side of my head, rubbing my shoulder blades.

Then, I think of something else.

"It's Odair." I say quietly, and he smiles widely, looking around.

"Where _is_ the lucky man?"

"I - " I'm about to tell him the truth, but I can't form the words.

**_Mr Reynolds said to say hello_**

**_I started to cry, I started to cry_**

"Say hello to him for me when you see him!" He says, rushing back to his family. Tears burn the backs of my eyes and I nod, clutching my bag to my chest. I keep staring in his direction until I see him hop onto the next train in line, and by the time his train is out of sight, tears are pouring down my cheeks, and I'm not doing a thing to stop it.

**_Every place we ever walked and_**

**_Everywhere we talked, I miss you_**

Before I even go home, I go to the beach. It looks fine - the water, too - but there are countless fisherman and boaters on the sand with their boats, repairing and rebuilding. I shake my head, not wanting to see the damage, and take a walk through the town square. The market is no more. Not a single stand is up and running. I get to the end of the path, where it breaks off in three: on the left, the poorer part of town, on the right, the richer, and in the middle, the narrow path into the Victor's Village. I can already see the roofs of the houses towering over the smallish trees.

**_You never leave my mind_**

**_So much of you is left behind_**

I enter the house as silently as I can, not that anyone would be there to hear. The kitchen has been ransacked, to which at first I straighten my back and narrow my gaze, but when I hear footsteps in the hall, I just get scared. I tiptoe to the doorway, peeking down the hall. Nothing. I know better than to go searching, but there's nobody else here with me to go instead, so I do. I grab the baseball bat that Finnick always kept by our bed, that's somehow found its way to the kitchen. Beats me how it got here, but there's no point in pondering it because I wouldn't rather it be way up in the bedroom, giving whoever's in my house time to get away while I went to find it.

**_You took my days with you_**

**_Took my nights with you_**

I don't find anyone, though I search late into the night. Sleep never seeks me out, either, though whether that's because there's somebody in my house or the regular reason of being unable to sleep, I don't know.

No, I don't find anyone. They find me, albeit by accident. And as soon as I see them, all of my anger and worry dissolves immediately.

**_Those unfinished conversations_**

**_We used to have still speak to me_**

She's tiny, the little girl. By the time she finds me and I convince her I'm not going to hurt her, she's falling asleep, and I tell her she's welcome to stay the night.

"What's your name?" I ask her softly, stroking her hair gently. Her head's in my lap, but it's being forced out of its spot by my pregnant belly. She eventually gives up trying to fight the baby for the spot and climbs onto the armchair in the corner of the living room. Before she falls asleep, she gives me her backpack of the things she'd taken.

"I'm Eden." She whispers as she drifts off, and I smile, throwing a blanket over her, and walk into the kitchen, cleaning up a little.

**_And I write you letters every day_**

**_That I'll never send and you'll never see_**

Eden stays for breakfast the morning after, and asks me when she sees the notebook in front of me what I'm writing.

"Letters," I reply, looking at her. She meets my gaze. Her eyes, I notice in the new light of the day, are blue, but so, so dark blue that you can hardly tell they're blue at all. I've only seen those eyes once before...

I push the thought from my mind as she asks another question. "Letters to who?"

"My husband," I tell her, closing the notebook, and shake my head. She leans on the table, pushing her plate away from her.

"Where is he?"

"He's gone." I drop my gaze, taking her plate to the sink.

**_All this wishful thinking_**

**_Gets me nowhere, I can't stay_**

"I need to go," Eden tells me, looking down.

"Where's your house, sweetie?" I kneel down to her height, thinking that if I brought her home and explained the situation to her parents, she wouldn't be in trouble with them. She seemed to be too young for them to ground her, but they'd still be worried sick, and worried sick usually meant just a little bit of anger at whoever causes you to be so.

"To the left," she murmurs softly, and I nod, taking her hand.

"We'll get you home," I hug her gently. She smiles at me.

"Thank you, Annie. And...I'm sorry that I stole your things. I thought you wouldn't be home, and my daddy doesn't have money to get much food, and -"

"You gave them back." I shrug, already having let the whole thing go.

**_Though my heart is broken_**

**_It keeps breaking every day_**

As we approach Eden's house, I realize my fears have come true.

A man sits outside the house. I can tell, even from the bottom porch step, that his eyes match hers exactly. He stands, his mouth set in a straight line.

"Where the _hell_ were you?" He grabs her arm, shaking her, and I think for a moment he hasn't even noticed that I'm there, too, until he straightens up again, his eyes meeting mine with a terrifying power to them. "Well, hello, Annie Cresta," he says in a low voice, pushing Eden back toward the house. He takes a step closer to me, and my belly pushes into his stomach. He looks down at it, then back up at me, his whole expression showing disgust. In a murmur, so only I can hear, he spits out, "You always were such a whore."

**_You took my hopes with you_**

**_Took my dreams with you_**

No matter what I tell myself, his words hurt. I stay standing in the same place until he yells at me to _get my slutty ass off his property or he'll call the Peacekeepers. _I don't have the heart or the courage to tell him the Peacekeepers are all gone, and he's a moron. Eden gives me a wide-eyed, scared look as he shoves her inside, and even through the windows, through the walls, I can hear her cries as he hits her.

**_I keep thinking that you'll be calling_**

**_Everyone says that it's all in my head_**

It was almost five months after my Games, I heard him talking to his friends about me. I was sitting on the beach, nearly lost in my own thoughts, but not quite, as always. Finnick was away in the Capitol and I missed him a lot, but all of my thoughts were eliminated from my mind when I heard Corey Lance say my name.

_"That's her," I heard him say. I didn't turn around, not wanting to let him know I was listening, though he no doubt knew anyway. "Odair's girl." I hugged my knees, straining my ears to hear more. _

_"Man," a new voice, his friend, I figured, said. "She's not even that hot."  
_

_"But she's gone mad, didn't you hear? Totally helpless, he's just taking pity on her anyway." _That's not true, bastard. _I thought to myself angrily, clenching my fists. Still, I said nothing. __  
_

_"So? Helpless girls ain't that cute, no matter what they think."  
_

_"She's so weak," Corey again. I swallowed the lump in my throat, no longer wanting to listen, but listen I did. "She must be so great for him to fuck."  
_

_I wanted to tell him off. Get mad at him, show him just how helpless I really was. But as I watched him walk down to the water, something in me was thanking my brain for thinking better of slapping him and staying quiet.  
_

But saying nothing didn't stop him from raping me that very night._  
_

**_And I can't accept it yet_**

**_I'm not ready to just give in_**

I told authorities a long time before I told Finnick. They didn't believe me; the entire district had sort of written me off as insane by the time, and they didn't see a point in investigating such a thing. I waited nearly a year before I told him, and I only ended up telling him because I'd had my regular nightmare about it, but the difference was that time, I'd talked in my sleep.

It was the first time I ever saw Finnick Odair cry.

**_I know that I can't live in this pain_**

**_With these feelings of regret_**

After a month, Eden is back on my doorstep, this time asking if she can stay for good. Because I can't stand to send her back to Corey, I nod, wrapping her up in a hug. Before the week's through, he's got authorities against me, but after showing them her bruises and scars, it's back in his face, and he's off to our new Capitol to the prisons, and Eden is my new adopted daughter. I can't honestly say I regret it. The only regret I have concerning Eden is that I didn't get her out of there the moment I found out who her father was.

**_I can't comprehend this_**

**_And pretend that I don't care_**

"Annie," she says to me one day a few years later while we eat lunch. My new son and her little brother, Finn, is on my lap, his dark auburn locks of hair falling over his forehead. I've told her countless times that she can call me Mom, but she only shrugged that off and continued to call me by my first name. "If your husband was still alive, do you think he would've wanted me?" She's been told about what her father did to me, and ever since, she's been careful not to put a toe out of line, as if doing so would make me not want her anymore.

"Of course," I reply without hesitation. "He'd love you as much as he'd love Finn. And he'd love Finn as much as he loved me." Eden looks down at her plate, tears flooding her eyes.

"You know how you told me he doesn't live here anymore because he had to fill the place in your heart? And that now he lives there?" I nod, reaching over to wipe her tears away. Her voice grows louder as she continues. "Do you think he'll fill a place in Finn's heart, even though he never knew him?" I nod again, standing up, and walk over to her, setting Finn down to hug her. Eden sniffles, wiping her eyes. "So, even though I'm not his daughter, do you think he could fill a place in my heart? Because my daddy never really did that..."

"Oh, Eden..." I kiss her forehead gently. "I think so."

**_Any place I wanna be_**

**_I wanna see you there_**

**_You took my life with you_**

**_Took my world with you_**

"Annie! Eden!" Finn pulls me out the door, grinning. Eden gets up from the couch, abandoning her book, and follows curiously. "You have to meet Aunt Katniss's baby!" Eden has influenced him in calling me by my first name.

Peeta and Katniss are sitting on the beach, their seven-month-old daughter Lily in Peeta's arms. I haven't seen them since before she was born, and the moment I see the little girl, I decide that I'm going to have to leave Four sometimes to go visit, because she is _beautiful. _

Without asking, Finn snags the baby from Peeta, carrying her over to Eden and me. I look at Peeta apologetically, but he's just laughing, and he and Katniss stand, walking over to us. I take Lily, balancing her on my hip and one arm to poke her nose with my free hand. She gives me a little baby grin, a giggle bubbling from her throat.

"If Finnick were here," Katniss begins with a smile, looking at me, as if making sure I wouldn't explode in tears at the mere mention of Finnick. She continued, "He'd say he was just thankful that Lily didn't inherit my scowl." Finn's the first to laugh, and his laugh is the loudest, and in that moment, I can nearly pretend that Finnick is there with us. I suppose he is, in a way. He's in our hearts, his genes are in Finn, his love is forever with me. His jokes still linger with all of us. Even Eden admits to me one night that she feels she knew him, too, better than the few times he taught her how to swim when she was very young.

And with that in mind, I can finally believe that everything will someday be alright.

_**A/N:**_ _Hope you liked :) I recently discovered the musical Ghost and heard this song and immediately thought of Odesta, so I figured I should write this. Plus the minor little detail that I needed a bit of a break from writing my Odesta multi-chapter fic. Review if you feel like it, whether it's positive or constructive feedback, I appreciate it. Thanks for reading, love you all lots :)  
_


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